A new method and instrument for measuring circular motion error of NC machine tools

A new method and instrument for measuring circular motion error of numerical control (NC) machine tools are described in this paper. The instrument consists of a linear displacement transducer bar with two balls at each end and a high accuracy rotary encoder. The radius variations are detected by the transducer and the rotation angle of the bar is measured by the rotary encoder while the machine is moving in a circular path. The measuring area is circular except for a small area around the center of the disc. The bar can be expanded and contracted along its axis for different application. The instrument has a compact structure and can be installed on a machine tool simply and quickly. It is shown by the experimental results that the instrument has good repeatability and high precision of measuring circular motion trajectories. The instrument can be widely used especially in the error-compensation and error-source project in the industrial application.